Interactionists interested in second language acquisition postulate that learners’ competences are sensitive to the context in which they are put into play. Here we explore the language practices displayed, in a bilingual socio-educational milieu, by three dyads of English learners while carrying out oral communicative pair-work. In particular, we examine the role language choice plays in each task. A first analysis of our data indicates that the learners’ language choices seem to reveal the linguistic norms operating in the community of practice they belong to. A second analysis reveals that they exploited their linguistic repertoires according to their interpretation of the task and to their willingness to complete it in English. Thus, in the first two tasks students relied on code-switching as a mechanism to solve communication failures, whereas the third task generated the use of a mixed repertoire as a means to complete the task in the target language.
We analyse data collected at multilingual schools in Catalonia, taking a plurilingual and socio-cultural Conversation Analysis approach to the interactions studied. The analytical sections of the article show how plurilingual practices are resources for students' participation in classroom activities; we argue that language learning is a process that is reflected in how students' participation is achieved and modified in classroom interaction over time, and in the ways in which they mobilise interactional resources for scaffolding their completion of cognitive and communicative activities. Our results suggest that learners set out from an initial stage in which they have little possibilities of participating in communicative activities in the target language, and progressively, through practice, and through the use of interlinguistic (e.g. recourse to resources from other named languages in their plurilingual repertoire) and intralinguistic (lexical substitution and paraphrasing) procedures, they learn to participate in interactions in unilingual mode in that language. We then argue that as plurilingualism is a reality both of social interaction and of learning processes, it should be 'didacticised'; that is, transformed into classroom teaching methodology. We introduce our understanding of the didactics of plurilingualism, an approach based on project-based learning, and discuss its operation on the macro, meso and micro levels.
This state-of-the-art review provides a critical overview of research publications in Spain in the last ten years in three areas of teaching and learning foreign languages (especially English): context and language integrated learning (CLIL), young language learners (YLL), and technology-enhanced language learning (TELL). These three domains have been selected for their relevance to current education policies and practices in Spain. This review aims to provide access for international readers to research published in Spain in the local languages or in English, within these innovative fields.El presente artículo ofrece una mirada crítica a las investigaciones en torno a la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en España en los últimos diez años. Este estado de la cuestión presta especial atención al inglés y aborda tres ejes que tienen gran relevancia en las actuales políticas educativas y las prácticas docentes en España: la introducción temprana de una lengua extranjera, el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras (AICLE) y el aprendizaje de lenguas asistido por ordenador (ALAO). Este artículo pretende divulgar internacionalmente los estudios publicados en el ámbito nacional, en inglés y en las lenguas vernáculas, en estas áreas de innovación.
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